SEATTLE — When Taylor Swift performed in Seattle last month, she did more than just set off seismic activity at Lumen Field. She also made downtown feel like it did before the pandemic.
You may have wondered how many people crammed into downtown that weekend, when Swift played back-to-back sold-out shows in Seattle to more than 144,000 fans. Now we have an answer, courtesy of the Downtown Seattle Association and its visitor-count data. The data is produced by Placer.ai, a national firm that provides foot-traffic analytics from smartphone tracking technology.
It’s looking like the key to downtown’s revitalization may be to somehow persuade Taylor Swift to perform here on a regular basis.
Over the July 22-23 weekend, nearly 1.15 million folks visited downtown Seattle. The biggest day of the weekend was Saturday, July 22, which drew 582,323 visitors downtown. Sunday was not too far behind, with 571,515.
That Saturday’s visitor count was the largest for a single day in downtown Seattle since the start of the pandemic. To beat it, you have to go all the way back to Oct. 3, 2019, when 640,059 poured into downtown.
What was so special about that date?
That’s when the Seahawks played the Los Angeles Rams — but it wasn’t just any game. On that day, the team posthumously inducted owner Paul Allen into the Ring of Honor.
The Downtown Seattle Association collects data for the greater downtown area, which includes some areas east of Interstate 5 on Capitol Hill and First Hill.
With the large number of visitors downtown thanks to Swift, Seattle even set an all-time record: Saturday, July 22 generated $7.4 million in hotel revenue, smashing the previous single-day record by $2 million. Of course, there were some other events that brought visitors downtown the same weekend as Swift’s concerts, including the Capitol Hill Block Party, the Seafair Torchlight Parade and the Mariners-Blue Jays series.
The previous record for hotel revenue was $5.4 million, and it wasn’t very old: It was set July 11, during the Major League Baseball All-Star Week, which was hosted in Seattle from July 7-11.
Speaking of the All-Star Week, that was another big draw for the city last month. The double whammy of baseball fans and Swifties helped bring the total number of downtown visitors in July to its highest level since the start of the pandemic: 3.05 million. The previous pandemic-era high was set in August 2022, and was just a few thousand lower.
As high as this July’s number was, it was still lower than July 2019 by roughly 230,000 visitors.
In some more positive news for downtown, July marked the third consecutive month of more than 50% of workers coming into downtown Seattle compared with the same months in 2019. July’s number was 55%, the same as June. And hotel room demand in July was at 99% of the number for July 2019.
The Downtown Seattle Association data also shows more than 56,500 occupied apartment units in the greater downtown area. That is the highest record number to date.
Swift set another record during her time in Seattle. Her first night at Lumen Field drew more than 72,000 fans to the stadium, the most ever. But that record didn’t stand long. When British pop singer Ed Sheeran played Lumen Field on Saturday, he set a new attendance record of more than 77,000.
That said, the downtown visitor count on the day of Sheeran’s concert — 534,829 — didn’t surpass the numbers for either day of Swift’s Seattle performances.
